I promised honesty and frankly anytime I withhold information the potential violation of that campaign slogan I used puts me at risk of stress. I’m feeling a lot of stress these days. I feel like I’m juggling chainsaws and new ones keep getting tossed my way.
I’ve got the two cutests grandsons a Papaw could ever want to spoil. I’ve got a half dozen books I’d like to write. I have a Mother who suffers Alzheimers but refuses to die to tend to. I’ve got a School District that I’ve tended to for 35 years but see going under and know that a little campaign pledge breaking stealth might help me to navigate away from ruin. But that stealth has me juggling chainsaws that could kill me if I drop a single one.
I could use good night’s sleeping but I ain’t getting it. I woke up at 1:30 and foolishly fixed a caffeinated tea and consumed some caffeinated Hershey kisses while pouring over finance records of the School District. While trying to figure out unsuccessfully how to take columns of numbers from a sheet of paper and embed them on an excel spread sheet I divined a marvelous plan to get the two most unlikely people together to hash out their differences. Its a brilliant idea and would be almost as surprising as the Hitler Stalin pact that divided Poland at the outset of World War II. It might kill me to try to pull it off. Certainly I don’t want to trumpet it or mention the details to the world.
But I crawled into bed and say wide awake feeling my heart as though it was a character in some damn story by Edgar Allen Poe. Maybe quitting the School Board before I have a heart attack is the smartest thing I can do. I was younger five years ago when I retired from active Red Plan bashing. Being an occasional bloggy critic was good for me. But not having a hand was hard too. I was afraid that if I didn’t file for election last year I might die from the stress of knowing I was shirking my responsibility. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
This blog is not the first person for me to describe my sense of stress. I called Art Johnston a couple days ago and after half an hour of pacing like a mad man on the phone with him – something I told him had become a habbit – I told him I was worried about a heart attack and told him that over the past five years Art was the man most likely to bring about my bouts of stress. Art is a bit of a time bomb. He has sat on the School Board frozen out of the decision making for four years. I know if Art explodes it will kill the thin veneer of amity our Board has demonstrated for the past two months.
I made the mistake of telling Art last December that I thought I could get us on the road to recovery within six weeks. That was hopelessly optimistic. As he reminded me that was three months ago. The sad fact is diplomacy can take a long, long time. Think of all the diplomacy that has been poured into Israel and Palestine for the past fifty years and more. Things look worse than ever there.
People who keep diaries often find a release in confiding to their secret little books their deepest fears. I do the same only mine is this blog and it is very public. Its also quite cunning of me to strategically spill some beans. Remember what the Nazarean said about snakes. But at the same time I’ve got to keep the doves in mind.
I’m going to spill a lot of beans and to mix my metaphors let the chips fall where they may. I haven’t got time or the patience to have all sorts of private talks with the various powers on the Board and in the Administration. So this is how they can keep track of the chainsaws I’m juggling. I hope they can and will prevent me from cutting off my hands.
BTW. I won’t be proof reading these posts carefully. I’ve got an easy 10,000 words inside me bursting to get out. For a start.
